A SpaceX Starship rocket launch ends in a mid-air explosion minutes after liftoff

SpaceX’s massive Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, took off for its first unmanned flight Thursday and flew successfully for more than two minutes before spinning out of control and exploding in a cloud of flaming debris.

“Starship just experienced what we call a rapid unplanned deconstruction, or RUD, during ascent,” said SpaceX engineer John Insprucker, who serves as the launch commentator on the company’s webcast.

Now this was a development test, this was Starship’s first test flight, the goal is to collect data and like we said, clear the board and get ready to go again. So you never know exactly what’s going to happen, but as promised, excitement is guaranteed! Starship has given us an end What was truly an incredible test.”

Twitter SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who monitored the launch from the SpaceX Control Center in Boca Chica, Texas: “Congratulations to the SpaceX team on the exciting test launch of the Starship! Have learned a lot for the next test launch in a few months.”

The launch on Thursday was the second attempt after a The countdown has been cleared On Monday due to the valve being frozen.

Impressing thousands of area residents, tourists and journalists looking on from nearby South Padre Island, the 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines powering Super Heavy’s first stage at 9:30 a.m. EST, two minutes later than planned It has minor technical hurdles.

The engine quickly throttled up 16 million pounds of thrust—twice the power of the current record-holder, NASA’s SLS moon rocket—and the giant rocket climbed majestically away from SpaceX’s “Starbase” launch facility.

With its engines gulping down about 40,000 pounds of propellant per second, the rocket first climbed straight and then tilted gracefully into an easterly trajectory toward the Florida Straits.

But onscreen graphics in the SpaceX webcast showed that three of the Raptor’s 33 engines either stopped working moments after liftoff or never ignited in the first place — two in an outer ring of 20 stationary Raptors and one of 13 scalable central engines. for guidance. Three more outboard motors shut down over the next minute and 20 seconds or so.

One minute and 55 seconds after liftoff, the rocket’s exhaust plume suddenly changed shape, becoming visibly asymmetrical, indicating a major malfunction of some kind. Soon, the rocket seemed to begin to speed around its long axis like a toy top decelerating.

The first stage engines were expected to shut down 2 minutes and 45 seconds after launch and the SpaceX console could be heard checking the shutdown command. But the first and second stages did not appear to separate, and a few seconds before the four-minute mark, the rocket exploded.

At SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, a crowd of the company’s engineers sighed at first, then broke off into cheers and applause.

“There is as you have seen, as promised, an exciting end to the Starship’s inaugural full-fledged test flight!” exclaimed the all-time outstanding Kate Tice.

The maximum altitude was just over 24 miles and the top speed was around 1,400 mph. The car had fallen about 18 miles when it exploded, presumably due to the automatic self-destruct system.

The FAA said the agency would oversee an investigation into the mishap.

“Return to flight of the spacecraft/heavy vehicle (will) be based on the FAA’s determination that any system, process, or procedure related to the accident does not affect public safety.”

What does the accident mean for SpaceX and NASA

During a Twitter Spaces call with subscribers Sunday, Musk repeatedly downplayed expectations.

“The spacecraft is the largest rocket ever built,” he said. “It’s more than twice the thrust of a Saturn 5 rocket, a Saturn 5 moon rocket, and it’s the largest rocket ever to go into orbit, it’s almost twice as massive. So, we have 33 engines on the booster, we have six engines at the top of the ship..it’s a lot of engines.” .

“So I guess I’d just like to set expectations low. If we get far enough away from the launch pad before something goes wrong, I guess I’d consider it a success. Just don’t blow up the launch pad!”

Musk says the Starship, made up of the Super Heavy first stage and the second stage also (confusingly) called the Starship, is key to the company’s future.

While SpaceX’s hugely successful Falcon 9 rocket now dominates the international commercial launch market, it is only partially reusable. The first stage of the rocket has so far made 186 successful landings, but the upper stage has been lost.

In turn, much stronger Starship, capable of lifting 100 tons into low Earth orbit, and is designed to be fully reusable. The Super Heavy is designed to return to the launch pad, either in Boca Chica or the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and descend for landing, where it is picked up by two huge robotic arms on the launch bridge dubbed “chopsticks.”

Spaceships are designed to fly themselves to land wherever landing pads are available as well as eventually landing on the Moon or Mars.

But for the vehicle’s first integrated test flight, no recalls of these vehicles are planned. The goal was to collect flight data down to splashing “hard” waters in the Gulf of Mexico and, in the upper phase, the Pacific Ocean.

SpaceX failed to meet those goals on Thursday, but just getting the Super Heavy out of the ground and out of the dense lower atmosphere marked a significant milestone for the California rocket builder.

NASA, which is paying SpaceX billions to build a variant of the Starship upper stage to Carrying astronauts All the way to the lunar surface in the next two or three years. It was also encouraged.

“Congratulations to SpaceX on the first integrated flight test of the Starship!” tweeted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Every great achievement throughout history requires some level of calculated risk, because with great risk comes great reward. We look forward to everything that SpaceX learns, to the next flight test and beyond.”

But it won’t be easy.

To send a spacecraft to the Moon, SpaceX must first launch it into low-Earth orbit where a series of other spacecraft will have to rendezvous, dock, and independently refuel the Moon-bound ship so it can blast out of Earth’s orbit and head into the depths. space.

The NASA contract requires one uncrewed test flight to the lunar surface before astronauts can attempt a landing. Achieving all of that by the end of NASA’s official goal of 2025 sounds like science fiction, but agency officials are hopeful that SpaceX can make it happen.

It is not known how many Starship test flights are planned before SpaceX is ready to launch paying customers. And aside from NASA’s moon program, no fewer than three civilian missions have been booked so far.

Billionaire Jared Isaacman, who charted Crew Dragon’s first private flight into low Earth orbit in 2019, it plans to join the first orbital test flight of the spacecraft as part of its Polaris Dawn program.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa, who paid for the Russians to visit the International Space Station in 2021, also chartered a Starship flight — “Dear Moon” — to carry him, an assistant, and 10 privately funded artists and influencers around the world. Moon trip this year or next.

A third civilian space flight carrying 12 passengers, including space station veteran Dennis Tito and his wife, has also been booked. Tito paid the Russians an estimated $20 million to visit the International Space Station in 2001, and he says he can’t wait to get back in space and share the experience with his wife.

It is not known what SpaceX would charge for the flight of a privately chartered spacecraft.